The present invention relates to authoring tools that can be used in connection with contemporary word processing programs. In particular, the present invention provides an author of an electronically drafted document with a word checker that checks for and identifies inappropriate word choices in such document based on a sensitivity scheme of the user""s choosing so that such words may be modified if necessary.
The prior art is replete with word processing programs, including a couple of contemporary favorites, Microsoft WORD and Novell""s Wordperfect, that are used by a substantial portion of IBM-compatible computer users. These programs are used in known ways for permitting authors to create electronic text (and graphics) documents. As a part of such word processing program, a spell-checking routine is almost always included to help authors reduce the number of unintentional text errors in such documents. A number of prior art patents are directed to this feature, and a reasonable background of the same is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,604,897 to Travis and U.S. Pat. No. 5,649,222 to Mogilevsky, both of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
It is apparent, however, that spell-checking routines associated with such word processing programs have a number of limitations. Key among these is the fact that they cannot determine whether a particular word choice, while accurately spelled, is nevertheless perhaps inappropriate for the particular context within a particular document. As an example, many words that may be intended by a drafter (such as the words xe2x80x9cask,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9csuit,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cpublic,xe2x80x9d etc.) can be transformed into potentially offensive words merely by changing a single letter in such words, transposing a few letters, or by mistakenly adding or dropping a letter. These transformed words, however, will still pass the spell-checking facility, because many of them include even a number of offensive words as part of their standard dictionary. For example, the word xe2x80x9caskxe2x80x9d may be inadvertently written as xe2x80x9cass,xe2x80x9d and unless the message is intended to discuss issues pertaining to certain members of the animal kingdom, it is likely to be an inappropriate word choice. If these inadvertent mistakes are not caught by the drafter during a later review, they will be included in such document and potentially communicated to one or more third parties. Depending on the severity of the mistake, the receiving audience, and the scope of the distribution of the document, the consequences may range from minor embarassment to substantial financial loss from lost future business with such third party.
The possibility of such errors is increasing each day because of a number of driving factors, including the fact that standard dictionaries for word processors are growing in size to accommodate the largest number of words of course in a particular language. While one solution may be to not include such words in an electronic dictionary in the first place, this result makes the creation of such dictionaries more complicated because an initial censoring must be done before the words are even translated into electronic form. Moreover, this solution does not help the user to identify inappropriate words that may be skipped over during a spell-checking routine.
Another factor leading to increase in electronic word choice errors is the fact that many electronic documents are never reduced to a physical form before being disseminated. In many instances a glaring error is caught by a human inspection of a printed page before it is sent out. The so-called xe2x80x9cpaperless officexe2x80x9d while improving efficiency and reducing waste also naturally causes a larger number of inadvertent message errors in text documents. Additional errors can even be induced by spell-checkers because when they detect a mis-spelled word, they will often provide a menu of potential word choices as replacements, and it is remarkably easy to select an inappropriate word choice from such menu, again merely by accident. Such errors of course will not be detected because the document is erroneously considered to be xe2x80x9csafexe2x80x9d by many users after spell-checking has completed and they will not check it again. In other words, some facility for checking the spell-checker dynamically is also desirable, but does not exist at this time.
There is some facility in the prior art for permitting users to create so-called xe2x80x9cexclusionxe2x80x9d dictionaries for analyzing text documents. An example of such kind of system is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,437,036 to Stamps et. al. which is incorporated by reference herein. A drawback of this approach, however, lies in the fact that it requires the user to both divine and manually input all the potential mis-spellings that could occur, and even if they had the time, there are obviously an endless variety that might never be considered by such user. For example, a user may not have the foresight to notice that a simple transposing of two characters (a common error) may generate a word that is extremely offensive. Furthermore Stamps et. al. do not appear to contemplate the possibility that the act of rendering a document xe2x80x9cspellingxe2x80x9d error free may itself generate unintended word selection errors. As such, therefore, Stamps et. al. is not truly a xe2x80x9cwordxe2x80x9d checker, but, rather, an enhanced spell checker that has been sensitized to a particular user""s poor spelling habits. While it incidentally determines whether a word is perhaps not the intended choice of the author (i.e., that the word does not have a particular meaning), it does not perform the important step of determining the precise meaning of the word, and in particular whether the word also has a potentially inappropriate meaning as well.
A few methods for proof-reading electronic documents are also known in the art. A U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,065 to Lange et. al., also incorporated by reference herein, describes a technique for detecting word context errors in a document. This technique seems limited to homophones however (for example, it knows to see if a user intended to use the word xe2x80x9ccoursexe2x80x9d instead of xe2x80x9ccoarsexe2x80x9d) and is not generally applicable to the problem of determining inappropriate use of language in documents. For example, unless a particularly offensive word has a homonym, Lange et. al. would not even detect such word as being a problem. The approach of Lange et. al. further requires a fair amount of computational complexity, since it must analyze the text preceeding and following after a word and use a complicates set of syntax rules to determine whether the word is being used in context correctly. This fact alone makes it essentially unusable for most contemporary word processing programs which utilize background spell checking, dynamic spell-checking, etc.
Finally, a U.S. patent by U.S. Pat. No. 4,456,973 to Cargren et al., and also incorporated by reference herein, discusses the use of an electronic word dictionary that has an associated code field for indicating the level of comprehensibility of such word. For example, the word xe2x80x9cabandonxe2x80x9d is coded with a numerical designation 6, indicating that the word is probably understandable by children at the 6th grade level. Cargren et al., however, do not appear to address the more general problem of identifying text that has been inadvertently mis-spelled by an author, and which is likely to be inappropriate. In other words, the Cargren al. approach presumes that the user has correctly input the word in question, and unless the word is coded with a rating below that of the intended grade group of children, it is not flagged in anyway. It is apparent that this method of encoding is fairly impractical for use in an electronic dictionary intended to be used by an adult population, because adults are not classified in this way. In fact, if a target audience of a document is intended to be primarily adults, then the Carlgren et al. approach would not flag any words at all, because they would probably be presumed to be operating at the highest level of education (12), thus rendering this type of filtering essentially useless. In addition, there is no facility mentioned by Cargren et al. for detecting words that are likely to be offensive, even if consciously selected by the author. For example, the use of the word xe2x80x9cdamexe2x80x9d may be consciously selected but nevertheless undesirable in communications in which the intended audience is primarily adult women. A drafter of an electronic document may desire to be notified of such potentially offensive words if they are known to be sensitive.
An object of the present invention therefore is to reduce the number of unintentional inappropriate word choices within electronic documents that would otherwise go unnoticed using conventional word processing document checking tools so as to improve the integrity and accuracy of such documents;
Another object of the present invention is to provide a system and method that is easily and seamlessly integratable into conventional word processing document checking tools so as to enhance the performance of such tools;
A related object of the present invention is to provide a system and method for filtering and verifying the contents of one or more electronic documents to determine the presence of potentially inappropriate and unintended word choices;
Yet a further object of the present invention is to reduce the number of intentional but unknowingly inappropriate word choices within electronic documents that would otherwise go unnoticed using conventional word processing document checking tools;
A related object is to improve the performance of present day word processing document checking tools by providing an additional verification tool that confirms the appropriateness of the selections made by such prior art checking tools;
Another object of the present invention is to permit a user of a word processing program to selectively control the level of sensitivity to be used for determining whether words in an electronic document are potentially inappropriate;
Still another object of the present invention is to permit an author of an electronic document to have the words of such document analyzed and processed by a number of context filters of the author""s choosing to reduce the number of potential inappropriate words in such document.
These and other objects are achieved by the present invention which includes a word checking software routine (implementable as a stand-alone program or integrated with a conventional spell checker) that checks the meaning of words in an electronic document authored by a user. When word-checking for the document is desired by the user, the words from the document are retrieved one at time, and checked against entries in an electronic dictionary to determine whether they have a particular meaning that has been designated as potentially inappropriate for use in a text document. The determination is made based on comparing a threshold sensitivity level (which can be controlled by the user) with an appropriateness rating found in one or more status fields associated with the word. If the word in question has a rating higher than the threshold set by the user, an alert is provided to indicate such result.
In another embodiment, multiple status fields are used. The status fields can be used essentially as multiple context filters for assisting an author in reducing the number of potentially inappropriate words as they may be conveyed to multiple intended audiences. The ratings for the words in any of the status fields can have any range of values and are preferably coded at the time the words are placed into the electronic dictionary. They can also be modified by the user, later, if desired.
The present invention is completely integratable with a conventional spell-checking program, so that the spelling of a word can also be analyzed before its meaning is also checked. When a mis-spelled word is found, a user can select from a list of accurately spelled substitute words instead, but such substitute word is also checked to see if has a meaning that is potentially inappropriate for use in a text document.
Another variation of the present invention permits a user to specify a set of documents to word-check, and to generate an output indicating the results of such check.
In yet another embodiment, the meaning of the words in the document are checked during an idle state of the word processing program, so that the operation of checking the entire document at the user""s request at a later time can be reduced in time because it will already have been partially completed.
To further reduce errors, another embodiment of the present invention checks the meanings of words substantially immediate in time after they are input into the document by the user. This can ensure that a potential word problem is in fact brought to the user""s attention automatically and without the need for a further command from the user.
The electronic dictionary used in the present invention includes a series of records corresponding to words and their associated status field values. The data for these records are input in electronic form to create a set of words in computer readable form for the dictionary, along with status fields associated for each of such words. Again, as mentioned above, the status fields indicate whether such word has a meaning that is potentially inappropriate for use in a particular context. As the dictionary is constituted, any number of status fields can be used to correspond to different sensitivity ratings for different target audiences.
The present invention can be included within a word checking software module that is itself embodied and transferred in computer readable form, such as a floppy disk, a hard disk, a CD-ROM, a magnetic tape, or a non-volatile semiconductor memory. In this way, a new type of computer system is effectuated which permits an author to perform a word checking operation on an electronic text document generated by a conventional word processing program running on such system.